As ESPN grows, so do the missteps

If you were watching ESPN on Oct. 16, you would have seen SportsCenter anchor Dan Patrick enjoying what he believed to be a pretty big scoop.

Proving its claim that it is, indeed, the Worldwide Leader in Sports, ESPN had secured a telephone interview with the world's most famous fan, Chicago's very own Steve Bartman.

Only it wasn't Bartman, which Patrick learned when the voice on the phone asked his own pointed question:

"Do you like Howard Stern's butt cheese?"

Whether Patrick is fond of Stern's butt cheese is still unclear because at that point Patrick ended the call, announcing that ESPN had been tricked, which was already obvious.

That's the kind of reality television I'd stay home to see, not just because it's funny but because to watch ESPN be made into the butt of a joke is surprisingly gratifying.

It's nice to see ESPN look foolish in the same way that it's nice to see the New York Yankees lose.

ESPN wasn't always a behemoth. In fact, from the time ESPN first aired in 1979 and for many years after, it was your buddy.

These days, you kind of look at ESPN like your best pal who got rich and affected after too much time hanging out with his new celebrity friends.

Those clever "This Is SportsCenter" commercials that have been around for years aren't so clever any more. I see one now and all I think is that any organization that attempts to cover the news and then uses its subjects to promote itself as much as ESPN does is in for some trouble.

It seems like ESPN has found it.

"Playmakers," ESPN's first dramatic series, premiered at the end of August.

The show portrays a fictional football team, the Cougars, getting into all sorts of off-the-field trouble. One player feeds a drug addiction, another is accused of beating up his wife. Just to be clear: It's fictional.

Right before "Playmakers" went on the air, ESPN programming chief Mark Shapiro told a Tribune reporter that NFL players "will get the fact that it's a fictional approach. Athletes won't feel attacked. No athlete is going to shut us out because he or she feels attacked by a dramatic series."

You have to admire Shapiro for giving athletes some credit, but what world is he living in?

A few years ago, even Vice President Dan Quayle couldn't distinguish between fact and fiction when he expressed outrage that Murphy Brown, portrayed by Candice Bergen, was having a baby out of wedlock.

NFL players are upset but not yet in full revolt. Enough of them are angry, however, to the point that NFL Players Association head Gene Upshaw questioned if ESPN should be in both the business of telecasting NFL games and producing a dramatic series depicting pro football players.

The Association for Women in Sports Media is also upset that one character in "Playmakers" is a female reporter who flirts with a player. This isn't the only problem ESPN has dealt with in recent weeks.

Rush Limbaugh signed on as a commentator on ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown pregame show this season. Barely a month in, he resigned amid a firestorm that began when he said the media overrated Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb because he is black.

When ESPN first started, it billed itself as the first all-sports network. It created SportsCenter and aired as many sporting events as it could find. I fell in love with it, as did most of America's sports fans.